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'Extractors' put training to test
Special unit vital in 'Operation Noble Eagle' at Pentagon site
Story and photos by Spc. Casondra Brewster
MDW News Service
Fort Belvoir, Va., Sept. 19, 2001 — The Military District of Washington Engineer Company has trained for the sort of scenario that played out Sept. 11 at the Pentagon. Since 1989 the unit has practiced its search and rescue techniques in a range of collapsed structure and other disaster scenarios, to be ready to handle such contingencies when called upon.
Despite their constant preparation for such a catastrophe, the call that came Sept. 11 to perform their mission was shocking for many of the soldiers, especially as they would be aiding fellow soldiers and service members at a symbol of military fortitude, the Pentagon.
"For a terrorist attack of this magnitude to occur on American soil was more than a surprise not only for the engineers, but the entire nation," said Sgt. 1st Class David Steffenhagen. "Obviously, now the American public realizes that the terrorist threat in the United States is more serious than before."
"However, once we got the call," Sgt. 1st Class Fred Brown said, "there was no hesitation."
The platoon sergeants said the decisive response was a direct result of increasingly complex training exercises. This training amplification followed a March 1999 visit from then Maj. Gen. Robert B. Flowers, commanding general of the U.S. Army Engineer Center, Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.
Brown came away from that visit with Flowers with a renewed focus on ensuring his soldiers received the best training possible. He said the training of the combat engineers who transfer into the Belvoir-based unit is extremely important. The MDW Engineer Company's mission differs greatly from any other engineer companies in the Army. Company leaders say the combat engineers have no prior experience in these types of contingency operations. They factor in a nine-month learning curve for new soldiers.
"Certain leadership decided that they were not going to half-step any of the training that we did," Brown said. "We wouldn't even consider a training exercise unless it was challenging and did not evaluate to standard. All that training paid off.
"The exercises were set up as hard and realistic as we possibly could do. Who knew this foresight, those hours of planning, resource-intensive, realistic scenarios would prepare us for this?"
During his visit two years ago, Flowers, who is now a lieutenant general, chief of engineers and the commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, said almost prophetically, that the unit is on the cutting edge of the homeland-defense mission. He cited the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and noted that the terrorists' secondary target in that attack was New York City's Holland Tunnel.
"If terrorists would have succeeded in their mission, it would have dealt a terrible blow to the United States and would have required the response from numerous special-rescue units from all across America," he said.
Flowers added that, in the wake of increased threats — even from his perspective in the Spring of 1999 — from terrorist organizations, military leaders have taken steps to develop doctrine on how to prevent, react to and fight terrorism on American soil.
Flowers said the MDW Engineers are a prime example of new anti-terrorism efforts. He was impressed with their skills during challenging training exercises both alone and with established civilian search-and-rescue task forces in the area.
Those cutting-edge skills and experience were in place when the engineers were alerted at 9:30 a.m., Sept. 11 to stand ready after the two planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers. The alert heightened at the first news of a third plane crashing into the Pentagon. Things "were moving too fast to even think about it; just react," said the engineer's operations sergeant, Sgt. 1st Class Paul Melendez.
By 11 a.m. the unit's Initial Response Team — an advance party of rescue engineers — was staged at Fort McNair, then airlifted to the Pentagon attack site. By 1 p.m. that team had initiated rescue efforts and conducted a reconnaissance mission for the remainder of the unit that would arrive a few hours later. This initial search was to try to find survivors locatable on the surface, according to Steffenhagen.
Many of the engineers recount that scenes inside the Pentagon, even away from the impact site, were pictures of urgent mass exodus. They talk of cups of coffee and breakfast sandwiches left on desks; an abundance of personal belongings such as purses, briefcases and eyeglasses deserted; even a virtual path of papers leading towards primary escape exits.
"They just left everything sitting," Steffenhagen said.
Five hours after the plane crashed into the Pentagon, by 2:30 p.m., the remainder of the company's main body arrived at what later would be dubbed "Operation Noble Eagle." With the bulk of the engineer rescuers in place, and the mid-day hour of 3 p.m. approaching, "The Extractors" started initial searches of the first, second and third floors in the three outer rings of C, D and E.
"The scene was simply ghastly; it was ghastly," Brown said. "That's the only way I can describe it. You can imagine the worst-case scenario of what you think it would look like. It's worse than that.
"One of the hardest things is when you're sifting through rubble, you're going through rooms and you're seeing plaques, flags — all the stuff that you'd find in any office around is right there. You have to think, 'My God, what happened to these folks? What were they thinking, doing? Did they know what hit them?"
First Sgt. Ray Gould said, "It was more than I could imagine as far as the totalness of the destruction. It was very painful."
Each soldier of the MDW Engineer Company can tell of a moment in time that sticks out for them.
"Tuesday afternoon is the most memorable moment for me, without a doubt," Gould said. "We were in the middle of a search and had moved into the courtyard, because we'd been inside for about two-and-a-half hours dealing with the heat, the carbon monoxide — our air monitors were alerting us to bad air quality. We had just sat down to drink some water and get re-hydrated when all the air horns started sounding. They were screaming across the radio, 'Get out! Get out! Get out! Aircraft inbound, unidentified!' We didn't know what it was. Everyone was running and screaming evacuation instruction. When we finally cleared the doors to get outside, it was total chaos for that moment."
The plane belonged to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which had received special clearance to fly.
Then at 2:30 a.m. the next day, once the fire had been contained to a more controllable degree, the engineers assisted with and conducted joint operations, most praying and hoping to see a miracle, to find a survivor at America's defense landmark.
"It was a disappointment to us that we have been unable to find any survivors," Gould said.
"When we began to sift through the rubble, that's the most memorable thing in my mind," said Spc. Henry Lee, a search-and-rescue specialist. "We saw things that someone at my age — 21 — should never have to see."
The Fort Belvoir soldiers, maintaining 24-hour operations, are partnered with men and women of other urban search-and-rescue units from the immediate area, including Fairfax and Montgomery Counties. They all went to work as soon as it was determined further attacks would not be a concern and the immediate task of quelling the intense and raging fire caused by the plane-turned-bomb was achieved.
"We were actually the only team, until today [Tuesday], that was running 24-hour ops," said Steffenhagen, the heavy-rescue team's platoon sergeant, a week later as the unit begins relief rotations.
They've been working around the clock. The primary focus of their mission, aside from search, rescue and recovery, is to work through the steel, wood, drywall, aluminum light fittings and the rest of the wreckage in order to rescue any possible survivors.
Gould said personnel safety concerns include the instability of the structure and the presence of jet fuel and biological and chemical hazards. Asbestos, for example, was used throughout the 60-year-old building. He said there's also safety issues with tripping on debris, being cut by jagged metal wreckage and having secondary fires break out, which did occur early the morning of Sept. 13.
More than a week into the operation, much of the engineers emphasis has been on bracing and shoring up the Pentagon's structure. In many of their training exercises, "breaching" through debris has also been a priority. But the jack-hammers, air-drills and tools like the "punisher," a heavy-duty, 65-pound concrete cutter used to break through rubble, would remain quiet. Instead, hand tools such as hammers and axes, were used vigorously.
"We knew we would be doing a lot of shoring," Steffenhagen said, but there were some surprising aspects to the shoring efforts that engineers hadn't anticipated.
"They didn't know it was going to be so big," he said. "They didn't realize that the size of the shoring and cribbing would be 16 and 18 feet." Cribbing is a square layering of limber pillars, almost like log-cabin construction.
Steffenhagen said the company went through their "starter-kit" of shoring lumber within the first 45-minutes of operations. This starter kit wouldn't be re-supplied, staged and ready for other contingency missions until Tuesday afternoon on-site at the Pentagon.
"We ordered a re-supply right away," Company Commander Capt. Aaron Barta said. "That way, once we were through the first load, another load would be available to continue operations."
"After that," Steffenhagen explained, "There were 18-wheeler truckloads of lumber being delivered nearly every 90 minutes."
In addition to shoring-up and bracing the Pentagon's structure to facilitate recovery efforts, the engineers also built "rubble chutes." Steffenhagen explained that these structures work similar to a laundry chute to slide debris quickly out of the crime-scene area for examination by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's teams, who assume the lead on detective work at the Pentagon.
Steffenhagen said the chute is more efficient than the bucket-brigade debris removal they had to employ with early on — the sort of effort still required of the emergency crews at the scene of the World Trade Center.
Tuesday the engineers went exclusively to night operations, giving a longer rest cycle for the soldiers as only 50 percent of their manpower is on the job each night — from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. — for recovery operations. The other half will have, in essence, "crew rest," explained Melendez, whose primary responsibility at Operation Noble Eagle is to keep track of the engineer company's soldiers.
Barta said the engineers are now working as a separate task force as opposed to partnering with Fairfax and Montgomery Counties.
But the company's enlisted leaders are quick to point out that they are still being supported by many others.
"Fort Belvoir Fire Department has been supplementing our teams throughout the work shifts," Steffenhagen said. "They brought their special services truck out there. They're running power lights, refilling (self-contained breathing apparatuses) packs, refilling fuel tanks. They rotate 12-hour shifts, just like us. We usually get two-to-three guys, because they still have to maintain operations [at Fort Belvoir]. But the truck's been there since the beginning and probably won't leave until we do. That's what they told us."
The engineers assess their motivation remains high and will be sustained no matter how long they are needed at the site, although training scenarios have generally run no more than 72 hours. They say their training has more than prepared them for this mission.
Steffenhagen said, "The intensity of the [Pentagon] operation is the same, it's just a longer operation and on a larger scale."
"The soldiers do every task without hesitation," Brown said. "I don't have to jump in anybody's case to do their job. They are more than willing to do anything we ask. I can't say enough about how our guys and gals are responding. There's no greater feeling for a leader [than] to know that all the training paid off."
More than scenes of disaster, the most memorable part of the operation for Steffenhagen has been the motivation of the soldiers and how trained they are.
"Their level of professionalism stands out most for me," he said.
"We've got a hell of a unit and a hell of a bunch of soldiers that stepped up and did a mission that we prayed would never happen," Brown said.
(Brewster is assistant editor of the Belvoir Eagle.) |
